"You'll have them from headquarters direct," said Stuart. "Oconostota
will furnish carriers, a Cherokee escort, and guides. The rendezvous
will be hereabouts, and your route will be the Great Trace."

"Then we are to hold on all and wait still longer?"

"That's the word: wait for the Indians and your cargo."

Falconnet's oath was of impatience.

"We've waited now a month and more like men with halters round their
necks. The country is alive with rebels."

Whereupon Captain Stuart began to explain at large how the northern
route had been chosen for its very hazards, the better to throw the
partizans off the scent. I listened, eager for every word, but when the
horses stirred behind me I was set back upon the oft-recurrent
under-thought of how the gloom did also hide a silent figure lying
prone, with the three bridle reins knotted round its wrist.

But though the unnerving under-thought would not begone, the scene
within the great room held me fast by eye and ear. The master and his
factor sat apart, their heads together over the knotty problem of
subsistence for the convoy troop. At the table-end, with the bottle
gurgling now at one right hand and now at another, the three king's men
drank confusion to the rebels, and in the intervals discussed the
powder-convoy's route across the mountains. The senior plotter had some
map or chart of his own making, and he was pricking out on it for
Falconnet the route agreed upon in council with the Cherokees.